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Post by Amadan on Jul 20, 2018 11:43:07 GMT -5
I am not claiming "nefarious intent" or "malintent" here. What I am saying is that this young, clearly inexperienced, and apparently not very knowledgable candidate (or her campaign team) is portraying her bio in a way that is purposely meant to manipulate your heart strings and garner votes and campaign contributions (where the majority will come from lower socio-economic backgrounds). She has pulled in over 800k in contributions, and 61.5% is from small individual contributions of $200 or less. Since you are stressing how poor her neighborhood is, I'm assuming a significant amount of those small contributions is coming from people who don't have much. www.opensecrets.org/races/candidates?cycle=2018&id=NY14&spec=N Someone said to not mention Yorktown. Someone said to call her father working class. Someone said she should say her father died when she was a teenager rather than 19 or almost 20. She says 'scrubbed toilets' when that is a small part of cleaning houses. (If my dad works at 7-11 and part of his job is to keep the employee bathroom clean, I would say he works at 7-11 not that he scrubs toilets). So yeah, I don't like being manipulated. And of course, I don't like her politics. But hey, if it works, and if her popularity helps fracture the Democratic party like Joe Lieberman is saying (see his WaPo opinion piece), let her play folks like a fiddle. Hopefully it will help the GOP during midterms. She's not playing folks like a fiddle. You seem to think she's some wealthy privileged woman fooling her constituents into thinking she's Maria from the barrio. You're wrong on every count and you keep insisting on this with nitpicky, ridiculous points like "She claimed her father died when she was a teenager but she was 19 and 19 is almost not a teenager!" I mean, I really cannot believe you're serious with that one. Even taking the most hostile and pedantic view possible and assuming that every portion of her identity is carefully crafted to present a misleading image, I would still call that one a stretch. Seriously. If I said "My dad died when I was a teenager," and later I told you "I was 19," would you actually call me a liar? Would you say I was being misleading? I mean, even granting that "teenager" usually refers to younger teenagers, it's still such a pedantic, petty piece of nitpicking that it makes everything else you complain about (which is also petty, pedantic nitpicking) look that much worse. Seriously. "Scrubbing toilets is only a small part of cleaning houses"? So.... scrubbing toilets is a lie? What. The. Fuck. Are you even saying here? What is the deception? What is it that her small donors are being "decieved" about? They think she's poorer than she is? They think her mother worked harder than she did? It's this absurd level of criticism you are leveling against her which is why the horse is getting flattened into a bloody smear here, because it's so damn petty and ridiculous and obviously politically motivated. You could say a lot about her deficiencies as an actual candidate, and Opty did that, but you go with a laundry list of items that are not even untrue, just maybe presented in the most politically advantageous way which is something that every person trying to get a job whether it's as toilet scrubber or Congresswoman does! I mean, it's great you don't think the level of "nefariousness" is too severe here, yet you think it's important enough to harp on it, 'cause you know, socialist therefore she should just admit that she was almost not a teenager when her father died and stop trying to manipulate people omg! I'm using lots of exclamation points and boldface because really, this is so fucking ridiculous, even from you, that I can't even. And yes, it means the next time people are going off on Trump, and you're defending him because the Fake News always makes a big deal out of things and he was almost sort of not entirely lying except the dishonest part that doesn't matter because what's really important is how bad Clinton was - you'd better believe I am going to uncork on you and point at this thread with sarcasm level on "Kill" setting.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 20, 2018 12:24:21 GMT -5
Obviously, I totally agree with Amadan on the level of "deception" here. But I'll add this, too: I think even if it were more deceptive (e.g, her Dad's business had been sufficient to maintain them in that wee little house without mom scrubbing toilets, and they were left reasonably well-provided for when he died), I would consider it to be inconsequential -- and yes, I'd say that even if it were a Republican.Don't believe me? I'll give you an example. Back when Paul Ryan was running for VP, he told a fib about his marathon time. And yes, because I am a runner who has run two marathons myself, I am quite confident it was a fib to make him sound more studly and not a mistake. He claimed he ran a sub-three hour marathon -- he estimated his time was about two hours and fifty minutes. (See link below.) In fact, he ran a four hour and one minute marathon (and yes, that one minute matters, as I discuss below). Paul discussed his claimed time and doubled down on it (until someone looked it up and called him on it), so it wasn't just a misstatement. Oh, you think he just "forgot" his marathon time? Pfft. I'll call on cray , fellow athlete, to back me up here. You Do Not Forget Your Marathon Time. A marathon is no little 5K charity race you run off the cuff for fun without training much. You put months of training into running a marathon, gradually increasing your stamina. It's a grueling slog, both the training and the race. The last .2 miles are an unforgettable hell. I'm not a weeper, and yet I wept with joy when I finished mine (and collapsed in exhaustion, and hurt for days afterward). And you don't ever forget your first marathon (especially if it was your only one). I don't care if it was a lifetime ago. Most of us know our marathon time, at least our first marathon time and our best marathon time, not just down to the hour, but down to the minute -- some even to the second, especially if they just missed a time they were aiming for by seconds. (Since Ryan was one minute over the 4-hour mark, trust me -- he was swearing his ass off over that! Missing an hour mark by a minute is damn frustrating! And shaving a minute off your marathon time is actually a big deal. This is something you can't appreciate until you've done some serious training and racing, trying to beat your own times.) Forgetting your marathon time by an hour is like forgetting where you were the first time you had sex. I'm serious. I have to say, my first marathon is at least as vivid to me as the first time I had sex. I can tell you just where I was when I started to hit the wall. I remember where my friends were standing to cheer. I remember how I felt turning the last bend in Central Park and seeing the finish line, I remember how it felt running under that finish clock, trying to look strong for that finish line snapshot they take. I remember what I ate for dinner that night. I remember what I wore. I remember everything. And that was fifteen years ago, for the record. Oh, you think it's no big difference? Pfft. Okay, I'll say up front that anyone who completes a marathon, whatever their time, has my respect for that accomplishment, to be clear, because I know just how much goes into even a slow marathon. But a four hour marathon is thoroughly mediocre for a fairly young man, as Ryan was at the time (it's a very respectable time had he been, say, a 45 year old woman, but I don't even think he's at the midpoint of the pack for a young man). Whereas two hours and fifty minutes is an AWESOME time. Lance Armstrong's time was just about three hours for the NYC marathon, to put it in perspective. Lance Fucking Armstrong! You won't win a marathon with that time, but you'll impress the hell out of everyone you know, including athletes in your running club. A good friend of mine who actually WON a hugely competitive sprint triathlon in NYC ran a three hour marathon later that year. There's just a YUUUUUUGE difference between a 2:50 marathon and a 4:01 marathon. And Ryan said he'd been distance running for many years -- so OF COURSE, even if he forgot his marathon time (pfft), he would know that four hours was mediocre (for a young man), and two hours and fifty minutes is impressive as hell. So I and all of my marathon-running friends and all kinds of running people all over the internet were scoffing at him for that fib. Maybe you non-runners bought it, but trust me that no one who ever ran a marathon (or trained seriously for one, but had to drop out after a few grueling long runs) did. He fibbed, not realizing how easy it is to find someone's marathon time, and that anyone would bother. Sorry, he fibbed. BUT. Here's the thing. It was definitely, IMO, a fib, but it was a shrug of a fib as far as his run for VP goes, because, seriously, who cares. Seriously. It was a pathetic little attempt to make himself seem a bit studlier. It made me laugh at him for it, I thought it was ridiculous, but it didn't make me think "ZOMG, I resent him for trying to mislead me and it shows he's a bad person!" As a matter of fact, until the last couple of years, when he's shown himself to be utterly spineless and willing to back Trump and cover for him even when he clearly knows Trump is fibbing/doing something bad, I didn't dislike Paul Ryan or think ill of him. (I also didn't agree with him on a bunch of things, but that's not the same thing as thinking he's a bad person or unfit for office.) Now my opinion of him has dropped right off a cliff. But that's because of his performance over this last year or two, not because of his silly fib about his marathon. Some fibs matter yuugely. Some fibs, well, are a lot more benign. (The fact is, pretty much everyone does a bit of benign embroidery on their life story in some way--especially when job-hunting, on a first date, etc. ) There's a whole context that matters -- how severe is it? What is it about? Why was it told? Did it hurt anyone? Is it one of many, part of a pattern? Etc. To compare, as Amadan noted and I tried to prove, Ms. O-C didn't even fib -- at best, you can quibble about the meaning of "working class", because her dad, though his business was a wee one that didn't bring much in, went to college. She was poor. She struggled. She is in fact from the Bronx, she did in fact lose her dad as a teenager, her mom did scrub toilets that were not her own. She presented her past in a romanticized, but really, not inaccurate, light. And even if she stretched more than she did, it's a "so fucking what" because that particular kind of stretching is what every job applicant, let alone politicians, do. But you, c.e., are making it out like she, oh, lied about sleeping with a porn star and paying her off, or omitting to disclose dubious financial ties. Except that that kind of stuff (and worse) doesn't seem to bother you -- if it is a Republican. And that's why we keep piling on you.
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Post by Christine on Jul 20, 2018 19:40:10 GMT -5
I am not claiming "nefarious intent" or "malintent" here. What I am saying is that this young, clearly inexperienced, and apparently not very knowledgable candidate (or her campaign team) is portraying her bio in a way that is purposely meant to manipulate your heart strings and garner votes and campaign contributions (where the majority will come from lower socio-economic backgrounds). She has pulled in over 800k in contributions, and 61.5% is from small individual contributions of $200 or less. Since you are stressing how poor her neighborhood is, I'm assuming a significant amount of those small contributions is coming from people who don't have much. So your beef here is that a 28 year old candidate wrongly claimed teenage status at the time her father died so that people would feel sorry for her and contribute to her campaign even though they couldn't afford it, and vote for her because her situation nine years ago is so sympathetic? Sorry but that's fucking mad. As far as candidates taking money from people who don't have much to give, here's Trump's take on a contribution he received of $7.23: You good with that?
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Post by Deleted on Jul 20, 2018 21:49:53 GMT -5
Heh. She didn't even wrongly claim teenager status.
And I admit that it's more than a little frustrating to me that I and others have gone to a fair bit of effort to demonstrate that Ms. O-C genuinely was a struggling girl from the Bronx, that she really didn't paint a particularly inaccurate picture of herself...
And yet c.e. has basically doubled down on Ms. O-C. being all deceitful and manipulative. None of us really made a fucking dent.
And the thing is, what right-leaning commentators did with Ms. O-C's background is far, far more misleading than what she did with it herself.
C.e., doesn't it bother you how the "500K revenue" was used to give the impression the family was living high on the hog on half a million a year -- when in fact his income was more likely 50K, in fucking NYC, where that is peanuts? Was that not deception intended to manipulate you?
How about how they left off mom driving a bus and cleaning houses to afford that two bedroom house, which they almost lost when Dad died? Or the very poor crime-ridden area she was born in and lived before her parents struggled to get her into a better school? You don't think leaving that stuff out was deception, a deliberate choice of facts to present, intended to manipulate you and arouse a certain reaction?
Where is your resentment?
FFS.
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Post by robeiae on Jul 21, 2018 11:58:18 GMT -5
She still doesn't seem to know beans about economics, despite her degree.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 21, 2018 12:13:49 GMT -5
And that's a perfectly fair criticism. (Indeed, I think everyone in the thread agrees on that point.)
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Post by robeiae on Jul 21, 2018 12:28:58 GMT -5
She's also in league with Lucifer.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 21, 2018 12:51:40 GMT -5
She's also in league with Lucifer. And Seabiscuit.
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Post by celawson on Jul 21, 2018 13:45:07 GMT -5
Maybe I shouldn't say I'm stepping out of threads, because often there are responses after my last post that deserve a response. So I'm stepping back in.
A few thoughts. (Note, I haven't read Amadan's post at me yet, because it's too pretty a Saturday morning in sunny So Cal for that.)
Anyway - Cassandra you say you've all worked hard to give good arguments to me but haven't made a dent, and to that I say of course you made a dent. I already conceded that I'm being petty and that you did a good job showing me her family was not wealthy. Is that not a dent?
Must I completely concede every point when we have an argument on here? Because that's what seems to be expected of me -- that you all put the time in to argue, and I'm supposed to concede every discussion. But it can't always work that way because sometimes you are arguing a different point than I am (like here), or you haven't convinced me that the entirety of my POV is wrong. It's ok if that happens.
I wouldn't be digging in my heels here if she were a qualified candidate with a workable platform. But she's not qualified. She's inexperienced. She has an inflated opinion of her knowledge. She doesn't seem to understand economics very well, yet her platform wants to fundamentally transform our country's economics. And her politics (which are not very developed) are not good. A good part of why she won is because her opponent ran a lazy campaign. So I do think her backstory helps her garner support, and garner media fawning, and garner her "rising star" status and her increasingly national profile. So in that respect, her truth stretches (as petty as they may be) matter more to me than Paul Ryan's marathon time, which I could argue probably did not garner him one extra vote or one extra dollar on any campaign he has ever run.
Which brings me to my next point. I never argue "whataboutism" on this board. If so, I could have brought up Obama in Cuba when Trump got bashed for meeting with Kim Jong Un, or the fact that the Russian meddling occured while Obama was POTUS, or Clinton-Uranium, or any of a number of Strzok or Comey issues (which are curiously non-existent here) during recent discussions. But I do not employ this tactic because to me it's fallacious and mostly not relevant to the discussion at hand. So if anyone who is arguing with me about something here then brings up "But the GOP does it!" sorry, that doesn't work on me, and I don't force that on you all. And I really don't think I have to denounce every example of a GOP doing something before I can discuss or criticize a Democrat. I don't have time for it, and usually it's already being done quite extensivey by others anyway.
BTW YES I absolutely see how the right wing articles about Yorktown attempted to mislead. And I accepted your argument at the time about her dad not being wealthy. (I also "liked" that post) So once again, the spirit of accuracy is somewhere in the middle, though I concede a fair amount closer to Ms. Ocasio-Cortez than the right wing claims are. I also did state that her story would have been quite compelling without the stretches/fluffs, which is another reason it bugged me. It's like when a tear-jerker movie tries too hard to make you cry.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 21, 2018 18:14:42 GMT -5
There is so much I could shred in your post, c.e., but yanno, life is short and there are way more important (and more fun) topics I could spend my message board time on. I was going to just let it go completely, but I'll address a couple of points. Pffffffft. I call BS. The stuff about stretching her background (which even you are admitting weren't much of a stretch) has absolutely shit to do with her inexperience and her being a socialist. Really, you're digging in your heels about how she lost her dad at 19 which almost isn't a teenager! and cleaning toilets is only part of cleaning a house! because you feel Ms. O-C is insufficiently experienced?! So, if a very qualified Democratic candidate with reams of experience stretched their background story in your view, you'd let it go? And if an neophyte pro-life Republican candidate with zero economic knowledge who thought the world was created 6000 years ago but whose platform you luuurrrved came from Ms. O-C's background, and said exactly the same things Ms. O-C is saying about her background, you'd be hammering in on her? No. No on both counts. You'd be doubling down condemning the experienced Democrat's background story stretchers, and you'd be praising the Republican candidate as a refreshing new voice with views we should all listen to, and that we should all cut slack for the political inexperience, lack of knowledge, and babbling ignorance. You know, like you did with President Trump. Moreover, if we quibbled about Ms. GOP Newbie being 19 when her dad died and so forth, you'd be lecturing us for being mean and biased because really what she said about her story was perfectly accurate. Oh, FFS. I have news for you. Her district knows all about her, and they fucking LOVE her. LOVE LOVE LOVE her. They know exactly where she grew up. They know all this shit. And they don't feel misled at all, because they weren't. The only people who feel cheated somehow by the fact that her parents, via working three jobs between them, managed to barely afford a two-bedroom house, are Republicans like you, living far far away. I'll wager she didn't garner a single extra vote or extra dollar with what you feel are her alleged stretchers -- you yourself admitted that her story isn't far afield, and her constituents don't think she stretched to begin with, because they (like me and unlike you) know the places and circumstances in question much better than the right wing media that distorted them. They LIKE her platform. They feel (correctly) that she's much more one of them than the incumbent, wee little Yorktown house notwithstanding. They liked that she cared enough to go door to door talking to them. That's why they sent her money and voted for her in droves, not because they thought her father died when she was 16 rather than 19. They might someday have voter's remorse after she's in office for a while, but they sure don't now. The reaction to the right wing smear attempt (which is well known in these parts and much discussed) has been fury--but not at Ms. O-C. The reason her alleged stretches matter more to you than Paul Ryan's marathon lie is because you like his politics and don't like hers. Period. And it's painfully obvious. (Whereas I don't care about Paul Ryan's marathon lie either, because it's petty and really doesn't matter -- like Ms. O-C's stretchers (even assuming for the sake of argument that's what they amount to) here.) Addressing all of the examples you bring up would be such a derail of this thread I just can't even bring myself to do it. Amadan et al, if you want to do it, here or in another thread, god bless, but I can't even. I'll just sum it up by saying I read that whole paragraph as "SQUIRREL!!" Yeah, see, but you NEVER do it. You're right there to jump in to defend, defend, defend, Republicans. But no matter how egregious the behavior is, you sidestep anything more than the faintest "oh dear" (and usually not even that) when a Republican (at least one who isn't in Trump's face) is involved. Yet you're right on top of the most pathetic, piddly criticisms of any Democrat. You disappear when Trump and the whole damn Republican party endorse the horrifying Roy Moore. When completely indefensible Trump shit happens, you are MIA, or you give some dismissive "oh, so he put kids in cages. It's just that he didn't know what he was doing and he has Daddy issues." Yet your attacks on Democrats for far, far, FAR less egregious behavior are just...well, see, e.g., this thread and how 19 is almost 20 and so she was deceptive when she said she was a teenager when her Dad died. Trump tells dozens of lies a day, and you couldn't care less. Jared Kushner's ludicrously "forgetting" to disclose dozens (or is it hundreds) of foreign contacts and assets -- pfft, you don't have a word to say. Same with the media. The NY Times makes a minor error, which it corrects the next day, and you're shrieking "FAKE NEWS!" But Fox and right-leaning media continuing to push the Seth Rich nonsense even now? Or this ridiculous smear job on Ms. O-C? Oh, no big deal. Carry on. So let me ask you this: You have agreed that the right-wing media distorted Ms. O-C's background more than she herself did. You've mentioned your resentment of Ms. O-C for it more than once. Do you resent the right wing media outlets for being (more) misleading? You think Ms. O-C may have possibly gotten extra votes because you think maybe a few of her extremely liberal overwhelmingly minority constituents didn't know about and would resent that two-bedroom house her parents worked three jobs to barely afford, and so would have voted otherwise. I disagree, but whatever. Don't you think maybe Trump got some votes he wouldn't have otherwise gotten by suppressing the affairs with porn stars and the payoffs and his tax returns and his unsavory Russian contacts during the elections (and for years previous to that and all the time since) and so on and so forth? A shitload of stuff has come out since the election, via the media and our law enforcement agencies. Can you possibly deny that Trump has been a zillion times more deceptive than Ms. O-C? Don't you think it's just possible 70,000 voters in three swing states might not have voted for him if they'd known it all at the time of the election? Do you resent it? I suspect what I'll hear in reply is crickets. But the fact is, no, you don't resent either of those things. Because your "resentment" about Ms. O-C's "deceptions" really isn't a principled objection to "deception" at all. It's all about My Party, Right or Wrong, Uber Alles.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 21, 2018 18:40:36 GMT -5
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Post by Christine on Jul 21, 2018 19:37:36 GMT -5
Yeah, I basically stopped taking it seriously after the whole "I wouldn't be digging in my heels" (about all of this nitpicky shit) if she was a good candidate. If that isn't outright ownership of a baseless opinion and a declaration of bias, I don't know what is.
C.e.,basically your latest contribution moved the goalposts, tried to pretend that your *real* criticisms were *actually* those of Opty et al, rather than what your actual criticisms were for pages and pages, and of which some unspecified portion still cannot be conceded, that the truth is "somewhere in the middle." Except it really is not.
I see the same behavior on the interwebs from the liberal side, and I'm sure I've engaged in it myself. But as intelligent people we need to not be blindly partisan; shit is too dire for all that and even if it weren't, we're better than that. You've contributed and have the potential to contribute valid alternative viewpoints on the forum. But this was not that, imo.
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Post by Christine on Jul 21, 2018 19:49:13 GMT -5
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Post by Deleted on Jul 21, 2018 21:11:50 GMT -5
I do concur that I'd have preferred Ms. O-C to become more knowledgeable and experienced before running for Congress. While, as I said, it's not like she's governor or President, where she can do lots of broad-scale damage all on her own, I'd still rather have candidates get a bit of local political experience before getting into Congress. Then maybe they might not embarrass themselves like this (watch the video at the link): /video/1 twitter.com/i/status/1020447912487280648Yeah, I know, it's a silly, unimportant little flub, and it's funny, but flubs like that will bring her jeers from the right, and from me, they'll fuel conclusions like this: I actually DO believe in her sincerity and good intentions. I don't think she's nefarious at all. But I don't think she was quite ready to be a Congresswoman yet. (It's actually rather amusing that I'm spending this much time defending her. She's really not my kind of candidate at all--I'm big on experience and I certainly demand that candidates have a plan for how they'd pay for their ideas and get them off the ground. But yeah, I do think she's earnest and well-intentioned.)
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Post by Christine on Jul 21, 2018 21:32:28 GMT -5
And Bernie tweeted it. SMDH.
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